Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window — one of that director’s most consummately brilliant and entertaining films — turns 70 this year.
Fathom Events honors the occasion with a special screening of the 1954 masterpiece on Wednesday, August 28th at AMC in Williamsport — accompanied by commentary from critic Leonard Maltin.
Whether or not you’re able to make it, here are some facts and trivia about Hitchcock’s famed crowd-pleaser — in which a wheelchair bound Manhattan man comes to suspect that an across-the-way neighbor has bumped off his wife.
The movie stars James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and Wendell Corey. It was the second of four films Stewart made with Hitch — and one of three for Kelly. In fact, that lovely star was set to do a fourth when Hitchcock wanted her for 1964’s Marnie; but as a newly crowned princess, Kelly ultimately decided against playing a kleptomaniac.
Rear Window is based on the story “It Had to Be Murder” by veteran crime writer Cornell Woolrich — working under the pen name William Irish. Woolrich tales also inspired Francois Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black (1968) and a terrific 1949 sleeper called The Window, in which a boy witnesses a murder while looking through a window — very similar to this later Hitchcock gem.
The 1998 TV remake of Rear Window, starring wheelchair-bound Christopher Reeve, really falls flat; but it does feature a clever reference to the story’s original author: One character attended Cornell University, and another works for Woolrich.
Neither Kelly’s character — society girl Lisa Fremont — nor Todd’s nurse appear in the original story.
The Oscar-winning screenplay for Rear Window was the first Hitchcock script written by John Michael Hayes, who went on to pen three other dandies for Hitch. Hayes based Fremont partly on his own fashion-model wife and partly on Grace Kelly; Hitchcock had asked him to meet with Kelly for a week before writing, so he could design the character specifically for her.
In order to work on Rear Window, Kelly turned down the female lead in On the Waterfront — a role that netted an Oscar for Eva Marie Saint (who, coincidentally, later starred in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest).
“We were all so crazy about Grace Kelly,” Stewart reflected. “Everybody just sat around and waited for her to come in the morning, so we could just look at her.”
The pianist neighbor in Rear Window is played by real-life composer Ross Bagdasarian — later more famous as the creator and voice of Alvin and the Chipmunks; watch for Hitchcock’s usual cameo as a clock repairman in the pianist’s apartment.
And yes, that’s Raymond Burr playing suspected murderer Lars Thorwald; Burr went on to greater fame as TV’s Perry Mason — and ironically, as the wheelchair-bound sleuth in Ironside.
Rear Window was shot on a custom-made indoor set featuring 31 apartments — many supplied with furniture, water and electricity. The largest set ever built at Paramount up to that time, it required digging down in order to accommodate the four-story building (Jefferies’s upper apartment was actually at ground level); in fact, they dug so deep that they struck water and had to build a special pump to drain the set between takes.
Except for a few brief shots involving the neighbors’ dog, Rear Window confines itself solely to what can be seen from Jeff’s apartment; it never leaves the room till he does. Hitchcock himself worked entirely from this room, radioing directions to actors in other the apartments by means of flesh-colored earpieces.
Except for the overture — intended to capture the jazz milieu of 1950s Greenwich Village — Rear Window has no musical score. Rather, the songs — whose lyrics often comment on the action — are heard from other apartments; Hitchcock had most of these tunes and other ambient noises recorded live to capture the hollow tones of sound crossing outdoor distance.
For a taste of Hitchcock’s brilliant technique, watch the opening shot; without a single cut or line of dialog, it introduces every character in the building and also explains how Jefferies broke his leg.
Likewise, note how the other apartments all represent possibilities for Jeff and Lisa (old maid, lonely bachelor, newlyweds, henpecked husband, etc.). In fact, when Lisa bravely locates the wedding ring and signals to Jeff with it, might she be proposing marriage? After all, she’s just proven herself the adventurous type of girl Jeff claims to want!
Many scholars have also noted Rear Window’s repeated assertion that watching movies is an act of voyeurism similar to that of Jefferies himself: each window is shaped like a movie screen; the movie starts with a curtain going up on Jefferies’s window; and much of Jeff’s spying is done through a camera.
When Hitchcock was challenged about this theme, he responded, “What’s so horrible about that? Sure he’s a snooper, but aren’t we all?”
